A Fierce Tiger in His Heart, Yet a Poor Household

Those closest to the water got the moonlight first.

The original owner and Zhao Jing next door had been Qingmei and childhood friends. Before he transmigrated, their two families had practically reached the stage of discussing marriage.

Unfortunately, he had come.

One misstep had squandered the family fortune, and after half a year, he had not cultivated so much as a fart.

By now, this "Qingmei" viewed the Su Family as a bottomless mire and this "childhood friend" as a pack of wolves and tigers. She would not even allow her own younger sister to greet him.

But Zhao Jing did not know that the current Su Xinghe was no longer the original owner. He was in no hurry to find a girlfriend and get married.

Her coldness happened to spare him the trouble of his family pressuring him to marry.

Gathering his thoughts, he strode into his little courtyard.

Calling it a courtyard was generous. It was more accurately a tiny open-air patio, altogether no larger than half a room. One glance was enough to take in the whole place.

Hazy candlelight spilled from the window, and the air carried the distinctive scorched fragrance of firewood and rice.

Amid the creaking friction of the spinning machine inside came a familiar, light cough.

Su Xinghe did not go inside immediately. Instead, he walked to one side of the courtyard, gently lifted the well cover, drew a bucket of cold water, and poured it over himself.

"Hiss—"

A searing pain flared from the wounds on his back.

He had not gone to the clinic earlier.

There was only one reason: to save money.

Fortunately, he had the trait of the Unyielding destiny. These wounds would soon scab over, and in no more than two days, he should be able to move freely again.

"Cough, cough... Xiao He... is that you?"

Hearing the sounds in the courtyard,

the spinning machine stopped at once, and a gentle woman's call came from inside.

Wiping the cool water from his face,

Su Xinghe finally let out a breath and answered, "Yeah, Mom. I'm back from work."

As soon as he spoke, the sound of shuffling footsteps came from inside.

In the wavering candlelight, a slender figure appeared at the window of the main room. Faintly visible was the pale, haggard face and delicate features of a middle-aged woman.

Yet her eye sockets were sunken, and there was not a trace of life in her half-closed eyes. She only tilted her ear slightly toward the well.

As though confirming whether her son had returned safely.

Only after hearing the strength in his voice did she smile and say,

"It's so hot today. You must be exhausted."

"The herbal tea is on the table. Once you've washed up, we'll eat right away."

"Mm, I'll be done in a moment."

In a few quick motions, Su Xinghe scrubbed his bloodstained dirty clothes clean, shook them out, and hung them beneath the eaves.

The Su Family were native residents of Lin County. Their family of four guarded a two-story Tongzi Ward building of roughly thirty square meters passed down by their ancestors. Apart from his mother, Chen Guilan, who could only stay home due to her eye disease, the father and two sons were all long-term laborers at Lu Family Farm.

At the beginning of the year, Su Xinghe had awakened from his muddleheaded state. Naturally unwilling to remain a tenant farmer with his face to the yellow earth and his back to the sky, he resigned from his laborer's job outside the city and returned to the county seat, intending to carve out a future for himself.

Of course, that was only the surface reason. His greatest concern was the original owner's death, and the key lay in the "Red Lotus Treasure Vase Qi" on the panel, which had no progress bar.

Back then, all his essence, qi, and spirit had been drained away.

After carefully thinking it over, he realized someone had used an evil technique similar to that of the Hehuan Sect to steal away all his vitality. Had his soul not awakened from its dazed stupor, he would likely have long become a mound of yellow earth.

Once he learned from the memories in his mind and the Fate Panel that this world possessed extraordinary martial arts, he inquired everywhere and did all he could to seek them out.

On one hand, it was to prolong his life and cure his illness. On the other, it was to evade the hidden hand in the shadows and gain some ability to protect himself.

After asking around, he discovered that Martial Arts Schools in the city were extremely strict about the age limit for accepting disciples.

Before the age of sixteen, ten taels of silver would buy three months of instruction. Beyond that age, one could only spend a hundred taels to purchase a place as a Registered Disciple.

His family were merely tenant farmers at a farmstead. Naturally, they could not produce that much silver, so he could only leave the city and try his luck at the black market.

Unfortunately, he was new to the place and could not recognize genuine techniques.

In his desperation, he had blindly sought treatment from anyone, buying from an old swindler the Ascending Dragon Stance, a foundational martial stance supposedly capable of both strengthening one's foundation and nurturing Qi Nourishment and blood.

Not only had he wasted time cultivating it bitterly, he had also thrown away forty taels of silver for nothing. That money was not only the original owner's family savings accumulated over many years, but also the funds for him and his younger brother to marry wives in the future.

His martial path had suffered a setback, but his illness had improved. With his destiny trait, he was even a little stronger than an ordinary person.

To repay his debts, and even more so for the martial path ahead,

he could only use his brute strength to find work as a dock porter first, working while searching for other opportunities.

But he soon discovered that Lin County offered few paths upward for ordinary people like him.

One was to become a street-patrolling constable under the Public Security Office of the county yamen's Martial Dao Bureau. Those who performed well might have a chance to become head constables and learn genuine techniques. But they only accepted children from respectable families, and the Su Family, who had been farm tenants for generations, did not qualify.

The second was to become an apprentice at various shops or escort agencies.

But he was already twenty-two. At that age, others had long since become masters themselves.

With no other choice,

he could only rely on his destiny's enhancement, which allowed him to recover his stamina quickly, and continue working at the docks.

After a month, he had worked two jobs by himself. Yet after being squeezed dry by all sides, he realized that even in ten or eight years, he would not earn back the hundred taels needed to buy a registered disciple position.

And that was assuming he neither ate nor drank. Could he really wait until he was forty or fifty to practice martial arts?

After all, his destiny was Diligence Makes Up for Dullness, not "Late Blooming Greatness."

Gritting his teeth, he resolutely set foot on the gang path, where one licked blood from a blade's edge. After all, it was the fastest way of making money he could think of.

But the original owner's family were all honest, ordinary people. Usually bullied by hooligans and ruffians, they despised this kind of profession most deeply.

To keep his family from worrying, and to prevent them from noticing that he was a counterfeit with a replaced "core," he only told others that he was still working at the docks.

It was also because this secret was discovered by a Little Beggar who roamed the streets and alleys that he had no choice but to first buy the boy off with a bowl of plain noodle soup.

That was how the two came into contact, and the young Little Beggar often deliberately tried to curry favor with this gang-affiliated big brother.

As their contact continued, he found the boy quite clever and his character passable. Moreover, having grown up in Tongzi Ward, he knew the surrounding area very well.

Especially after he unexpectedly discovered that Little Beggar could read, Su Xinghe could not help but regard him more highly.

This was a slum, after all. The vast majority of families were illiterate. Even he himself would have been half-illiterate if not for muddling through by guessing.

Su Xinghe began entertaining the idea of taking on a younger brother.

Gang members could not act as they pleased, while his father and younger brother lived year-round at Lu Family Farm outside the city. Only his mother, whose mobility was impaired, remained at home.

He often got into knife fights and had many enemies. Having a clever young fellow help watch the house and pass along messages gave him much greater peace of mind.

After dinner, once the kitchen had been tidied up,

he patched and repatched his damaged "battle robe."

When he was finished, Su Xinghe found that his mother was still spinning thread in her darkened room.

Picking up the oil lamp, he pushed open the door and walked in.

Chen Guilan was not completely unable to see. Su Xinghe suspected that cataracts had caused atrophy in her eye muscles.

Combined with spinning thread for long periods in a poorly lit room and overworking her eyes, her vision had worsened more and more, until she could only distinguish light from darkness and could no longer see things clearly.

It was not a major illness, but it severely affected her life.

Unfortunately, technology in this world lagged behind, and this kind of eye disease was widely acknowledged as beyond the reach of medicine.

"Mom, get some rest early. Don't wear yourself out."

"I'm almost a Martial Warrior. The money problem will be solved soon."

Though he did not possess the original owner's intimate familial feelings when facing his family, the entire family's unreserved care—emptying their savings to treat his illness and support his martial training—had moved him.

Seeing his mother work so hard now, Su Xinghe felt deeply sorry.

He could only first find an excuse to keep her from exhausting herself like this.

As long as he had another half year, he would save enough silver to learn genuine techniques at a Martial Arts School. As for the so-called secret manuals sold at the black market, like the Ascending Dragon Stance, he would never touch them again no matter how cheap they were.

With the Diligence Makes Up for Dullness destiny trait empowering him, breaking through to become a Martial Warrior would not be a problem. By then, forget tens of taels—even hundreds of taels of silver would be his for the taking.